5 Bargain Dividend Stocks to Buy Now

American dollar symbol standing on wood surface in front of a graph. Selective focus. Horizontal composition with copy space.
(Image credit: iStock)

‘Tis the season to go bargain hunting for stocks.

It might not feel like it, what with the Dow Jones Industrial Average having kicked off December by shedding nearly 1,200 points, but now is the time to do some holiday shopping in the market, especially in dividend stocks.

After all, as Warren Buffett likes to say, “Be greedy when others are fearful.” And the way the market has been behaving lately, it’s pretty clear that fear abounds.

The general retreat in share prices means valuations are down and yields are up. (Dividend yields and stock prices move in opposite directions.) That has made several large-cap, high-quality dividend stocks look mighty tempting.

The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index currently trades at 15 times expected earnings, according to Yardeni Research. To find bargains, we scoured the broad-market index for large companies that trade for less than 15 times projected earnings. At the same time, we limited our search to dependable dividend payers with yields of at least 3%.

After taking long-term earnings growth forecasts and analysts’ opinions into account, the following five names stood out as bargain dividend stocks to buy now.

Disclaimer

Data is as of Dec. 10, 2018, unless otherwise noted. Companies are listed alphabetically. Dividend yields are calculated by annualizing the most recent quarterly payout and dividing by the share price. Analysts’ ratings provided by Zacks Investment Research.

Dan Burrows
Senior Investing Writer, Kiplinger.com

Dan Burrows is Kiplinger's senior investing writer, having joined the august publication full time in 2016.

A long-time financial journalist, Dan is a veteran of SmartMoney, MarketWatch, CBS MoneyWatch, InvestorPlace and DailyFinance. He has written for The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Consumer Reports, Senior Executive and Boston magazine, and his stories have appeared in the New York Daily News, the San Jose Mercury News and Investor's Business Daily, among other publications. As a senior writer at AOL's DailyFinance, Dan reported market news from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and hosted a weekly video segment on equities.

Once upon a time – before his days as a financial reporter and assistant financial editor at legendary fashion trade paper Women's Wear Daily – Dan worked for Spy magazine, scribbled away at Time Inc. and contributed to Maxim magazine back when lad mags were a thing. He's also written for Esquire magazine's Dubious Achievements Awards.

In his current role at Kiplinger, Dan writes about equities, fixed income, currencies, commodities, funds, macroeconomics, demographics, real estate, cost of living indexes and more.

Dan holds a bachelor's degree from Oberlin College and a master's degree from Columbia University.

Disclosure: Dan does not trade stocks or other securities. Rather, he dollar-cost averages into cheap funds and index funds and holds them forever in tax-advantaged accounts.